When Neeko appeared, it created a surprise among the players as they discovered a female character who flirts with other women of the game.

Senior narrative writer Matt Dunn, who worked on the character, has just confirmed that Neeko is a lesbian.

Beyond that, she is a powerful mechanic champion who assumes the form of any allied champion until combat breaks the illusion.

Fans of the game think Ezreal, Vi, and Fiora are queer characters but it has never been confirmed by the developers. So Neeko is, for now, the first official LGBTQ champion of League of Legends.

]]>info@lezbelib.com (E-Li)Entertainment & MediaThu, 22 Nov 2018 00:25:05 +0000The new Spider-Man video game for PS4 is epic with many rainbow flags and a Pride wallhttps://www.lezbelib.com/entertainment-media/the-new-spider-man-video-game-for-ps4-is-epic-with-many-rainbow-flags-and-a-pride-wall
https://www.lezbelib.com/entertainment-media/the-new-spider-man-video-game-for-ps4-is-epic-with-many-rainbow-flags-and-a-pride-wall

Video game enthusiasts were pleasantly surprised to discover that the new Spider-Man, recently released on PlayStation 4, features many rainbow flags and a Pride wall.

This video game on Spider-Man is a new story. It's not related to comics, movies or other video games dedicated to the character. This is actually the first game released by the new video game developer, Insomniac.

"Wow. I stopped to perch on a building in #Spidermanps4 and looked over and saw this," tweeted science fiction and fantasy writer Saladin Ahmed.

'This' is the photo that illustrates this article.

Ahmed was one of the first gamers to notice the rainbow flag.

“Thinking about all the 12-year-old kids who will be playing this game and seeing this in towns where it’s not safe to put that flag up,” he said.

Right away, photos showing Spider-Man next to a rainbow flag went viral. One of the gamers, Chris Hatfield, said he saw "many rainbow flags" and "an awesome pride wall" in the game.

He tweeted, “This game was already awesome but just crossed over to epic!”

One thing is sure, the launch of Insomniac's first video game is successful.

Commercials titled "Celebrate Similarities" were launched in the UK. Featuring a lesbian, these ads were created to showcase women.

In 2016, Maltesers already had an award-winning campaign called "Look on the Light Side" for people with disabilities.

This time, through the Mars-owned brand's campaign, menopausal women, black women and lesbians are represented with a lot of humor.

We can discover a queer woman who talks about dating with her friends, the problem isn't that she's lesbian and vegetarian but she's accountant.

Like in 2016, Maltesers has partnered with organizations (Stonewall and Age UK) to learn more. They also organized groups with women who inspired some of the stories told in the commercials.

Michele Oliver, Marketing VP, Mars Chocolate U.K., said in a statement: "The adverts recreate real-life situations faced by women from different groups in society who you don't often see or hear from. We're telling their stories to help combat perceived stereotypes and celebrate our similarities, whilst at the same time hopefully making people smile!

"If you had more women – more older women, more gay women and women of color – they would get it more intuitively. But we’re a long way off that, and as a consequence it’s important to recognize the gap and say, look, we don’t know. Creative directors can’t pretend to know the stories of these women, so they need to go and listen to them."

She explains: "It’s not just gender, it’s the intersectionality of it. We’re looking to tell stories of older women, women of color, gay women, single mothers. Not only are women not seen in advertising, but the roles they play and types of women we do see are very narrow."

The goal is to try to inspire the UK market to create diverse and inclusive communications.

"I can feel there’s a sea change happening in the industry… but I never think it’s happening fast enough," Oliver said. "In the UK we have a real opportunity for the rest of the world to watch us and be inspired by how we can lead the change."

Very nice initiative to want to push women forward through these commercials.

Trulia real estate website has launched a tool allowing LGBT people to know if a house is located in an area with a non-discrimination law.

Trulia becomes an inclusive site. During Innovation Week, they decided to create Local Legal Protections, a tool for LGBT people to know if the place they want to rent or buy is covered by non-discrimination protections.

The development of this tool was made possible thanks to Pride, the LGBT group within Trulia. They relied on data collected by the Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit that works to advance non-discrimination policies for LGBTQ people in the U.S.

The tool is very simple. It allows you to know whether the locality has legal statuses to protect you in three sections: housing, employment, and public accommodations:

For housing, this refers to "Protection from being unfairly evicted, denied housing, or refused the ability to rent or buy housing.”

For employment, it allows seeing if there are local workplace protections for LGBTQ workers.

For public accommodations, it addresses local laws offering protection from being denied services or entry to public spaces.

“We want to help people understand their neighborhood and find a place they love to live,” said Tim Correia, Trulia’s general manager and senior vice president. “We are proud of this new feature, but acknowledge that the LGBT community isn’t the only group without explicit federal protections. LGBT specific data is a starting point for our Local Legal Protections feature. We’re always looking into data sources that will give house hunters the information they need to find the right place to live.”

Given that only 55.2% of housing units are covered by local LGBT protections (only 22 states + Washington, D.C. offer full protections), this new tool will surely help to find a pleasant place.

]]>info@lezbelib.com (E-Li)Entertainment & MediaTue, 03 Apr 2018 15:15:48 +0000ClexaCon, the largest convention for LGBTQ+ women and allies, returns to Las Vegas for a second year!https://www.lezbelib.com/entertainment-media/clexacon-the-largest-convention-for-lgbtq-women-and-allies-returns-to-las-vegas-for-a-second-year
https://www.lezbelib.com/entertainment-media/clexacon-the-largest-convention-for-lgbtq-women-and-allies-returns-to-las-vegas-for-a-second-year

Returning to Sin City for the second consecutive year, ClexaCon is a unique kind of media and entertainment convention for LGBTQ+ women and allies.

Taking place in Las Vegas April 5th through April 9th, 2018 at the Tropicana Hotel, ClexaCon celebrates queer female characters and stories, comics, books, connecting fans, celebrities, creators and journalists.

It also hosts a series of panels on a multitude of topics, workshops, charity events, parties, as well as a three-day film festival and a loud message of gender equality,female empowerment, diversity and inclusion.

The event brings together actresses, directors, producers, writers, comic book illustrators, visual artists, academics and fans from over 40 countries and all 50 U.S. states to celebrate the best of LGBTQ+ TV and film and discuss how to improve representation across all media platforms.

Nothing is more crucial and urgently important today than diversity and inclusion, and not just in Hollywood but in all business models and fields. This is where ClexaCon comes in as a leader in an industry-wide conversation to effectively rally together the decision makers and influencers of our community to formulate and put forth real change to counter the lack of representation for LGBTQ+ women in front and behind the camera.

With that in mind, ClexaCon aims to foster dialogue around various aspects of diversity including gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity and age, among others.

It also focuses on ‘inclusion’ with a series of panels tackling issues ranging from ‘Bias in the Media and Stereotype’, ‘Bisexual Representation in the Media’, ‘Decolonizing the LGBTQ Sphere: Indigenous Queer Representation in the Media’, ‘Gaysian: Queer Asian Representation’ and ‘Disabled LGBTQ+ Representation’, to name a few.

Continuing its endeavor to create a morally accountable event, ClexaCon is dedicating its social responsibility platform this year to The True Colors Fund. Co-founded by Cyndi Lauper, the nonprofit organization works to end homelessness among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth, creating a world in which young people can be their true selves.

What started as a simple meet-up to unite fans of LGBTQ+ pop culture, evolved into a full-blown convention with over 2,000 attendees last year. ClexaCon is expected to welcome some 3,000+ attendees this spring.

In its first year, ClexaCon brought quite a variety of celebrity guests who are playing or have played LGBTQ+ characters on screen.

Last year, Sara Ramirez, known for her role as bisexual Dr. Callie Torres on the popular television series, Grey's Anatomy joined the conversation at the queer women of color pop-up panel, speaking about her own bisexuality and struggles as a biracial woman.

Ramirez wasn’t the only celeb to get personal. Many others joined the convention and this year will be no different.

The name ClexaCon was born from the fan favorite ship ‘Clexa’ (Clarke & Lexa) on the show The 100. In 2016, lesbian Commander Lexa was killed by a bullet minutes after consummating her relationship with bisexual lead, Clarke Griffin, thus checking all the boxes of the ‘Bury Your Gays’ trope. This heartbreaking moment led the organizers of ClexaCon to create one of the first conventions geared towards LGBTQ+ women to move the conversation forward in a more positive way.

ClexaCon was created and is run by Holly Winebarger, Ashley Arnold and Danielle Jablonski with the goal to provide a safe space and a world-wide community of LGBTQ+ women and allies who love TV, film, comics and books; to encourage more LGBTQ+ women to get involved in content creation; to embolden allies to improve representation for LGBTQ+ characters in their creative work.

“We hope attendees feel empowered. We want them to leave knowing this industry, like all industries, is in desperate need of more diverse voices. Pick up a camera, grab a pen, start writing, start creating because there are other people who care about what you have to say,” says Ashley Arnold.

What makes ClexaCon relevant and current within today’s social, cultural and political landscape is that it is the only event of its size in the world. More and more comic con-type events are popping up all over the U.S. but it’s hard to find LGBTQ+ content in those spaces, let alone events that are geared specifically to our community.

At a time when lesbian spaces, festivals and publications are rampantly vanishing all across the country, ClexaCon becomes fundamentally necessary to reconnect a community - making an impact by providing a safe place for LGBTQ+ women from all walks of life to come together and act as agents of change.

ClexaCon is dedicated to being both a resource and an advocate for the value of diversity, equality and inclusion. It is now becoming a marquee destination for all things women in entertainment, proving that there is both quality and quantity to be found when it comes to creative work that represent LGBTQ+ women.

The programs are broadcast daily from breakfast time to midnight on political, economic and social topics while addressing LGBT rights.

The goal of Shams Rad is "to sensitize the people of Tunisia, ordinary citizens, and political decision-makers about homophobia in society and to defend individual liberties," said director general Bouhdid Belhadi.

"We are going to touch, through the subjects we treat, everyone living on Tunisian soil.

"Our editorial policy is to talk about rights and individual freedoms in general, but the focus will be on the LGBT community."

In Tunisia, homosexuality is illegal. The Penal Code sentences same-sex relationships for up to three years' imprisonment. Activists who are the hosts of the radio station have all received threats.

This is a great initiative to raise awareness about LGBT issues through a radio show. Hoping that it can broadcast a long time.

You have all heard about the intrusion of Russia into the US presidential elections. They targeted the Democrats and particularly Hillary Clinton. Well, Russia has come closer to LGBT people and other specific people like Muslims through pages and advertising campaigns on Facebook to manipulate them.

The scandal of Russia's intrusion into the US presidential elections has only begun. As we already know, the Russian government is involved in the piracy of emails from candidate Hillary Clinton. It would also appear that Russia has done everything it can to manipulate LGBT people.

The strategy unveiled shows that Russia has paid advertising campaigns targeting American LGBT voters. But not only!

They have set up a page called LGBT United that has received more than 5 million shares on its posts as reported by social media analyst Jonathan Albright.

This page served as a cover for a perverse manipulation by Russia.

Through posts on LGBT topics, it attracted people from the community. Then, the manipulation took place. They didn't try to insult or oppose Hillary Clinton, but rather to sow doubt in the minds of LGBT Americans that she might not be good to be President of the United States.

According to the Washington Post, other pages were discovered that targeted other US citizens.

The Russian government managed the pages Blacktivists, United Muslims of America, Being Patriotic, Heart of Texas and Secured Borders.

Facebook’s Vice President of Policy and Communications Elliot Schrage said: "Approximately 470 accounts and Pages we shut down recently were identified by our dedicated security team that manually investigates specific, organized threats. They found that this set of accounts and Pages were affiliated with one another — and were likely operated out of Russia."

This manipulation is repugnant. Not only is it opposed to democracy and has allowed Trump to be elected but it has negative consequences for all LGBTQ online magazines or blogs like Lezbelib.

Last week, Tumblr updated its filtering system by installing a safe mode. Unfortunately for us, it blocked the posts from the LGBTQ community.

This update allows users to block or mark content or blogs that they consider sensitive. Under-18-year-old users cannot access these sensitive content anymore as they cannot turn the "safe mode" off.

However, just after its launch, users noticed that LGBT content was blocked by mistake but that pornographic content was still accessible.

They have mobilized to try to find a way to hack the system and unlock this "safe mode". They even launched a petition calling for the removal of this security filter.

Since then, Tumblr staff apologized for the filtering of LGBT posts indicating that the so-called problem had come from users who had mass-blocked LGBT content:

"We’ve heard from a bunch of you that Safe Mode was filtering posts from the LGBTQ+ community even though they were completely innocuous and totally safe-for-work. Please know that was never our intention, and we appreciate you letting us know so quickly—and forcefully! We’re deeply sorry. Tumblr will always be a place where everyone is welcome and protected, so we want to explain what happened.

The major issue was some Tumblrs had marked themselves as Adult/NSFW (now Explicit) as a courtesy to their fellow users, and their perfectly safe posts were getting marked sensitive unintentionally. That should never have happened. We’re sorry."

In short, the team is working on improving the filter.

It's strange to always see the LGBT content blocked when a system like this is installed.